


Don't Look Back

by ArdeaWrites



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Biomech AU, Female Hunk (Voltron), Gen, No Romance, Platonic Relationships, What if Allura never went to sleep?, eventual angst, eventual body horror, original story reskinned as fanfic for fun and science, will update tags once this gets going
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-07
Updated: 2019-03-09
Packaged: 2019-11-13 07:10:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,983
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18027116
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArdeaWrites/pseuds/ArdeaWrites
Summary: What if Allura never went to sleep? What kind of woman would she be, and what would she be willing to do, if she never stopped fighting? Those lions weren't meant to be piloted by humans but if humans are all she's got left, she'll make them fit.





	1. Bonding Exercise

**Author's Note:**

> A while back I wrote a bunch of words for an original mech fic involving five good friends versus some unethical military experimentation. This is a reskinning of that story into a Voltron fanfic, for the fun of it and as a writing exercise. Expect non-graphic body modification, some McAngst, and lots of platonic cuddles. Cannon's been punted. Hunk is a girl. Base characterization and setting aside, I'm making everything up.

_“You’re not a charity case, you’re an abject failure of a pilot and you’re only here because it’s cheaper to feed you barracks rations than waste fuel sending you back to whatever backwater you call home. If you can’t improve your scores, you will be on janitorial duty for the next ten years. Maybe by then you’ll earn enough to pay for your own bus ticket.”_

Lance threw his plastic cup at the wall. It pinged against grey prefab, ricocheted off the ceiling and smacked him in the forehead. His flight instructor’s words had done much the same. He replayed them in his mind, trying to make them sound less… final, and failed. 

I’m a pilot, he reminded himself. A real pilot, because that’s what I choose to be. No one could change that, no matter what the simulator scores were or what his instructors said. He knew he could fly, the same way he knew he’d be able to get into flight school. The simulator run had been garbage from the get-go but he’d stuck with it and made the best of a raw team and a clunky, obsolete piece of junk. Today’s ships were far superior to the leaky box they called a cargo ship in the simulator and all the maneuvers he could feel under the throttle and yoke were impossible in anything but a fighter jet. 

And they weren’t going to let him anywhere near one of those. 

If nothing else, at least the rest of the class knew his name now. No more anonymity in the lower third, just notoriety in the bottom spot. I can fly a real ship, I know I can. He flopped back on the narrow bunk, imagining the simulation over and over, each time a grand success. 

“Hey, you ok?” Hunk asked from the doorway. “He was pretty brutal back there.” 

Lance sat up. “I’m fine. He doesn’t know natural talent from a neutered piglet. Come on, I have an idea.” 

“An idea with a simulation-level of success or a dinner-in-the-mess-hall level of success?” 

“It’s a good one, I promise.” He grabbed Hunk’s sleeve and tugged. 

Hunk leaned back and let him tug. She was three times his size and the reigning champion of her year in both the official grappling competition and the unofficial make-the-MREs-edible competition. He tugged anyway, made all the appropriate futile noises, and gave up, slouching against her shoulder. “Come on, it’ll be fun. We’ll get the others and go have an adventure.”

Hunk rolled her eyes. “All right, fine. What’ve you got in mind?” 

“You heard the commander, we need team bonding. So let’s go bond something.”

 

\---

 

Keith slammed on the brake and leapt from the hoverbike. Dust kicked up in a cloud around him, obscuring his vision and, hopefully, the outpost’s security cameras. With luck they wouldn’t get enough footage to identify him. 

He ran to the outpost and slammed the stolen ID card to the reader. The door opened obediently- no reason for advanced security at what was little more than a yurt with an antennae array. A makeshift airlock just inside belied its mundane exterior. Something was hidden inside, something that had come down from space in a giant fiery ball and was now very, very classified. 

Fortunately for him, classified meant ninety percent of the base’s military personnel weren’t cleared to know it existed. The alien object had crash-landed only a few hours ago, not nearly enough time to set up permanent security measures or decide who had jurisdiction over it or its contents. 

He slashed through the clear plastic airlock and air whooshed in behind him. Three med techs in hazmat suits turned to him in horror. They were unarmed. 

He barely registered their raised empty hands. When the nearest one hit the deck, the other two tried to fight. They were too slow in bulky, constricting suits to pose a serious threat. The last went for a needle. Keith disarmed the tech, his fingers easily wrenching the syringe from the tech’s oversized glove. He slammed it into the tech’s leg and watched with satisfaction as the man limped away, then slowly collapsed into a tranquilizer-induced stupor. He checked the other two- alive but dazed and no longer interested in fighting- and only then turned to the gurney. 

A man lay there, strapped down and unconscious. A man Keith knew very well. 

His chest constricted. He’d known. He’d known. Somehow, something had driven him to sacrifice his potential military career to break into a top-secret outpost and rescue Shiro, and now that he saw Shiro, he was not at all surprised. 

Surprised at his white hair and strange metal arm, yes, but not about his method of arrival. How else would he have gotten home but in an alien spacecraft? And of course he’d have crashed it, he was the pilot assigned to the science crew, not a military pilot. Science pilots flew the ship equivalent of cardboard boxes in nice tidy vectors, not small tumbling craft of alien origin. 

He cut the straps and levered the unconscious pilot up. They needed to be gone, or he’d find himself strapped to a table just like that one. 

Absently he wondered if the quarantine airlock had been important. 

 

\---

 

Lance had a brilliant idea. Had had a brilliant idea. The idea had involved a length of rubber hose, a month’s worth of soda swiped from the base kitchens, and the little round vent over the commander’s shower, accessible only by suicidal gymnasts or limber, visionary cadets. 

But it seemed bulk soda came in weird big bags, not tidy cans, and his visions of filling the commander’s personal quarters with sticky sugar-water was thwarted. “This stuff isn’t even fizzy!” he moaned. Thick clear syrup burbled out onto the roof, very little of it going in the tube. 

Behind him, Hunk laughed. 

“You knew this would happen,” Lance accused. “You let me get all the way up here and-“ 

“Would you two shut up?” someone yelled from the other end of the roof. 

“Hi Pidge,” Hunk said. She rolled the syrup bladder over the gutter and watched it splat onto the commander’s personal car below. “See? Not entirely a bad idea. Come on,” she pulled Lance to his feet and wandered across the roof to where Pidge sat, legs crossed, pouring intently over a small glowing screen. 

Lance stared down at the glistening mess over the commander’s car and grinned. Not a wasted night after all. 

“Go away,” Pidge greeted them. 

“Go away yourself,” Lance replied. “What’s that?” 

She slapped his hand away. “I’m concentrating.” 

“On what?” 

“Not you.” She didn’t look up from the screen. 

Hunk squatted behind her, massive forearms crossed over her knees, and grinned. “This is about that spaceship, isn’t it? You figure out how to track it?” 

“Yeah. Definitely not from our solar system. Doesn’t use the same fuel either. I mean it’s an alien ship, so that’s not surprising, but what is surprising is this.” She tilted the screen so Hunk could see. Lance leaned over and caught a glimpse of two diagrams, one bright pink and one glowing blue. “Here’s our standard launch and approach vectors for this base, and here’s the alien ship’s. Either we’ve got the exact same flight pattern as some random alien pilot-“ 

“-or the pilot is one of ours,” Hunk finished, nodding slowly. 

“Exactly.” 

“Lance, I just found us a bonding exercise,” Hunk announced. 

 

\---


	2. Enter the Castle

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Allura has the lions but she needs pilots and she's flat out of Alteans. When word reaches her of a single survivor of the brutal Galra biomechanical experimentation program, she thinks she might have a solution.

The wormhole spun closed behind them and she breathed a sigh of relief. She hadn’t made a jump that far in the castle in… she didn’t know how long. She couldn’t remember. The navboard said they were in a different galaxy, hardly surprising; which, she didn’t care. The planet before them was unfamiliar, but typical of its type. Doubtless it harbored complex life, maybe even advanced civilization. She didn’t care about that either. 

She gripped the control interface and glared at the glowing panel, willing the castle to move faster already. They were so close! Somewhere on the planet before them, a lifeform transmitted a faint but traceable signal. She’d been chasing that signal for months, and she’d been searching for it for years. Decades. 

Longer. 

Her fingers followed smooth grooves in the white ceramic interface, groves worn by her own grip, stained by her own sweat and blood. Ten thousand years, and the end was in sight. 

She held her breath and let it out slowly, willing away the exhilaration. So many false leads, so many other moments when the war’s end seemed just through the next wormhole…. Maybe this was another one. Maybe not. 

She would follow the signal. Capture the lifeform broadcasting it. Add one more piece of technology to the ever-growing puzzle her father had left behind, the puzzle at the heart of the galaxy’s eternal war. 

“What are your orders, Princess?” her general asked. 

She allowed herself a thin smile. “Advance on the planet. We must capture the survivor.” 

“This planet is unknown in our database, if its lifeforms can survive Galra biotechnological experimentation, they may pose a significant threat.” 

“Worth the risk, Coran. I need that test subject.” 

\---

Lance reached the downed Galra fighter first and threw himself into the pilot’s seat. He hit the biggest, brightest button, and nothing happened. “Come on!” he shouted. 

Keith shoved him out of the chair. “I don’t know who you are, but you aren’t flying this ship.” 

Lance opened his mouth to once again explain that yes, he was a pilot, and yes, he was Keith’s biggest rival, but the ship didn’t respond any better to Keith’s demands than it had to his. He shut his mouth and started looking seriously for a start button. 

“That’s a biolock,” Pidge said, pointing to the purple palm-sized panel in the middle of the dashboard. 

“How do you know?” Lance demanded. 

“It’s scratched in a hand pattern,” Hunk pointed out. She grabbed the unconscious man’s mechanical hand and pressed it to the panel. 

The ship sprang to life around them, coming up from the desert rock with a jolt. It hovered obediently, its lights and dials flashing unfamiliar symbols. Keith seemed to have figured out the throttle, because it leaped forward fast enough to throw Lance back against Hunk and the stranger. 

Their bonding exercise had gotten very complicated and very confusing. 

Lance took no responsibility for stealing an alien ship, or kidnapping an unconscious prisoner. Neither, for once, had been his idea. He was quite firmly innocent and if he couldn’t fly the ship he didn’t want any part in it. Clearly, this was something much bigger than a few cadets out past curfew. 

“Who is this guy anyway?” he demanded, untangling the sleeping man’s limbs from his own. 

“Shiro,” Pidge answered, not looking up from the dashboard. She punched buttons. “You have shields now.” 

“Good,” said Keith. He pressed the throttle and the ship sped up. Behind them, the angry squalling military sirens fell silent. “Hoverbikes aren’t a problem, but they’ll scramble fighters in a minute. Pidge, this thing giving you any kind of destination coordinates?” 

“Nothing I recognize. Hunk, is that a communications array beside you?” 

“That or a hairdryer.” 

“Give it to me.” 

Hunk passed Pidge the odd contraption. Pidge fiddled with it, pressed a button, and called, “This is Katie Holt of the Galaxy Garrison. We are in the alien ship, we have Shiro aboard. If you can hear me, please respond.” 

“Geez, just tell them everything will you? I thought we were escaping!” Lance protested. 

“I’m not calling Earth,” Pidge retorted. “Shiro was my father’s pilot. If he’s here, my dad’s gotta be close.” She called again, and received only silence. 

“Maybe it is a hairdryer?” Lance offered. 

Then it crackled so loud Pidge almost dropped it. 

_”This is Arak of the Galra Empire, Fifth Fleet. You are charged with stealing Imperial property and harboring a fugitive. Surrender immediately and prepare to be boarded.”_

They all stared at the communicator. 

“Not your dad, Pidge.” Hunk took the communicator back and spoke into it. “We’re sorry, we are helping other callers. Please hold for the next available customer service representative.” She clicked it off. “Anyone heard of this Galra before? No? Alright, Keith, might be time to turn this thing around.” 

“Too late,” Keith said. He tapped the scanner and Lance realized two things. The first was that the scanner showed two ships in front of them, instead of ten hoverbikes behind them, and the second was that both were the biggest, most alien-looking constructs he’d ever seen. 

One looked like a dark purple-black sword, a weapon, and it was spewing tiny fighters like theirs. The other was a dirty grey and it looked like a child’s sandbox toy. Faint pinpoints of laser light flashed between them and a handful of fighters exploded in silent red flame. 

The communicator crackled again. _”The Galra are your enemy,”_ a female voice said. _”Follow my instructions if you want to live.”_

\--- 

Allura’s lip twitched in disgust. Of course they’d chased her. Or the signal. Whichever. It didn’t matter. They were here, after her prize, and they were willing to fight. She brought up shields. Coran would already be on weapons. They’d been fighting side-by-side in the Eternal War for ten thousand years. She didn’t need to tell him his job. 

Luckily, the test subject seemed to be coming to them. No need to entangle themselves with the fate of the planet. That was a relief; she wouldn’t have to watch yet another innocent race break beneath the Galra military machine. She’d seen it happen enough times to know the script by heart. As long as she recovered that one survivor, she didn’t need the rest. 

She fed the little fighter a flightpath that would take it clear of the worst firefighting and into the castle’s shield shadow. The Galra knew to fear the castle’s guns and this fifth fleet commander was not risking a close battle, but if he stalled her long enough for the rest of the capitol ships to arrive, she might be in trouble. 

The survivor made it to safety in the shield shadow, but didn’t turn towards the castle. Instead it broke sharply away, heading for the planet’s small moon. She cursed under her breath and broke from her battle position to pursue it. 

“Princess, you’re presenting our least defensible angle to them!” Coran protested. 

She keyed all shield strength to stern in response, leaving their nose unprotected. A gamble, but a safe one as long as the Galra stayed behind her.

Where they usually were. 

“Where are you going?” she hissed at the glyph of the survivor’s ship. “You might escape the Galra but you won’t escape me.” 

\---

“He’s awake!” Lance hollered. 

He was indeed awake. And disoriented, and flailing, and now Lance was mostly under the seat he’d been on a moment ago. Hunk propped Shiro upright, corralled three human limbs and one cybernetic limb, and told him to hold STILL please. 

The message seemed to go through. He blinked and shook his head, then freed his flesh hand to rub his face. “Where am I?” he asked. 

Keith reached behind the pilot’s chair, grabbed Lance’s shirt and hauled him forward. “Switch with me,” he said. 

Lance slid under Keith and took the throttle while Keith maneuvered back, to flank Shiro. “We’re in your ship,” he said. “You crashed on earth. Do you remember anything?” 

“Is my dad here?” Pidge asked. 

“Is that the moon?!” Lance shouted. He banked hard, rolled left as a vibrant pink laser seared past them, and dove for the maze of grey craters. The ship handled exactly like he’d always dreamed. It was light, responsive, perfectly balanced, like driving a living bullet. 

Proximity alarms drowned out any reply Shiro made to their questions. Six fighters fell into a line behind them, trailing like a string of tin cans. Lance rolled into a crater, skimmed its edge and aimed for a dark fisher on the far side. 

“Pull UP!” Pidge reached over his hand to force the throttle back. “That’s too narrow for the ship. You trying to kill us?” 

“No, I’m trying to keep them from killing us! You got any better ideas?” 

“Yeah. The white ship was trying to give us directions earlier. Why didn’t you follow their map?” 

“I don’t trust strangers in strange ships, that’s why!” Two more bolts sizzled past, burning black streaks into the grey moondust. “Where’s the weapons on this thing?” 

“It doesn’t have any,” Shiro said. He sounded tired, his voice far too calm. “Training ship, no security.” 

“Did you bring my dad?” Pidge asked. 

“No,” Shiro replied. “I’m sorry. He’s alive, or he was, when they separated us.” 

“Where is he? Is my brother with him?” 

“Talk later, survive now!” Lance said. He jammed the throttle forward and the ship zipped across the moon’s surface, kicking up a dust cloud that seemed to confuse their pursuers. He grinned and threw the ship right into a tight circle. The dust cloud grew thicker around them, and suddenly the six dots were in front of them. He pulled up to gain altitude and yelped in surprise; what had been black star-filled space was suddenly bright white with ship. 

A black hatch opened in the white skin and the little fighter shuddered. Something was pulling them in. He threw the throttle forward but the ship didn’t respond. 

“Stop, you’ll burn out the engines,” Keith said. 

He stopped. 

The white ship’s blue lasers batted down the six fighters almost casually, an afterthought. Pink lightning from enemy weapons danced over its shields. It ignored the attacks. 

Darkness surrounded the fighter as it entered the ship. With a burst of static and sparks, its panels went dead. 

“Who captured us?” Hunk asked softly. “Is this that Galra’s ship…?” 

“No,” said Shiro. “Far worse. This is Altea.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This isn't really beta'd, just written for fun.  
> Everyone's aged up a tad, with Shiro at 26, Lance and Keith both 19, Hunk at 22 and Pidge at 17. Also Allura's been awake the whole time so she'd be... 10,017 I guess?


End file.
